And then I had the same
experience that I had when I went to Amazon to buy a Nest
thermostat. I was bombarded by a fusillade of terrible
reviews.

Basically, Nest smoke detectors
seem to come in two varieties: Some that work, which people love.
And some that constantly squawk false alarms, which people hate.
As a result, the Nest smoke detectors have tons of 5-star reviews
and tons of 1-star reviews, with few in the middle.

Well, I hate false
alarms.

I also already hate another
apparent "feature" of the Nest, which is that you can't turn off
the alarm from the app. Instead, in the middle of the night, you
have to find a ladder, rip the thing off the ceiling, and figure
out how to remove the batteries, all while wincing from the
piercing shrieking coming out of the device.

(And, after that, you
presumably leave the device in a drawer somewhere, far from its
batteries, and thus go unprotected.)